Porpoised for Action!

I set off on my adventure at 8am this morning, leaving Alan in bed, and caught a tram to the station and then a train to Villefranche.

The boat left the port at 9.30am and as I was there early I managed to get a seat at the front along with a young girl who was also a photographer.  We got chatting in French and she's a friend of the daughter of the guy that owns the boat, so she's been on the trip before and knew what to look for.  And coincidentally she's from Brussels!

The boat company have a spotter plane that goes on ahead and radios the boat when they see pods of dolphins so they know which way to head, and a couple of times it flew right over the boat, really low so we could see it.

Anyway, I wasn't disappointed, within an hour we saw our first pod - there were about 3 or 4 of them 'porpoising' (jumping out of the water), but they were so quick that it was very tricky getting good photos.  We saw some young ones too, which were really cute - I've added a shot of a mother and calf to my extras.

We moved on and the plane sent a message that they'd found some Finback Whales which are the second largest whale to the Blue Whale.  We spotted it in the distance blowing water through its blow hole, and as we got closer we saw it's immense size.  Unfortunately there was another boat travelling at high speed in the direction of the whale, so they thought it would disappear, but luckily it re-appeared so we sat and watched it until it submerged.

On our return to port, we suddenly diverted our course as they'd spotted a sperm whale!    We watched it until it dived into the water, showing us its tail, but my shots of it's tail are blurred so my Belgian friend said she'd email me some of hers - she has a Canon 650D so hopefully she's got some good ones.

We finally got back to port at 1.45pm and I headed back to Nice to meet up with Alan - he doesn't like boat trips which is why he didn't join me, so he spent the morning exploring, and found there was an antiques market in the Cours Saleya.  So we've Just hand a wander - saw some lovely vintage Louis Vuitton bags and Chanel jewellery, All quite pricey mind you!

We're now sat having a beer in the shade as it's rather hot and I've had enough sun for one day - it was quite exposed on the boat!

Ps: Tonight we went to a Thai restaurant in the old town. Imagine the scene - really narrow streets and tables outside, and then a removal van attempts to drive down, by a woman!  Now I'm a woman so I'm by no means knocking our capabilities, but she couldn't drive, and shouldn't have attempted it.  People at our restaurant eating outside had to get up and move, at the next restaurant down, she caught one of the tables, sending everything flying!  Then there was a grating noise, I got up to look and she was passing two little shops where she'd caught the canopy of one of them - it was rather amusing!